How to Decentralize Control and Get Police Officers to Love Their Jobs

About the Author

I never thought that I would grow up to be an
American Police Chief. I never would have chosen to grow up at all,
except that the people around me told me to. I can still remember
the first time I met a cop. One of the very first Emergency Medical
Technicians in New York City's police department grabbed us in
Central Park, and I needed a community service internship for that
summer. You needed one to graduate from my high school in those
days. The next thing I knew, I met and worked with police officers.
That time in Central Park was the first time I had ever met a
police officer. . .well, except once before. And I still say I
didn't jump that turnstile to get on the subway.

Then
I went to Dartmouth. After my freshman year, I interned in the New
York City Transit Police for Deputy Inspector Hillel Valentine. I
stayed interested and involved throughout the rest of my college
years, and when I was about to graduate, Tony Bouza, the very
outspoken deputy chief who later became chief in Minneapolis,
arranged for me to meet with Pat Murphy, the legendary one-time New
York police commissioner who has headed departments all over the
country. I stayed an hour and a half listening to Murphy and
getting to know him.

Pat
told me about Victor Cizanckas, who was chief in Stamford,
Connecticut, and had been chief in Menlo Park, California. He said,
"He's not that far off from New York, and he's doing some crazy
things. Why don't you go pay him a visit?" I interned with Victor
for six months before I went off to New York University Law School.
Never in my dreams did I think that 20 years later I would be
sitting in his job in Stamford. Every few months now, I go to Vic's
grave just to spend a moment.

After law school at New York University, I
became an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, New York. From
there, I became a special assistant United States attorney. In
1997, I became the general counsel to the New York City Transit
Police. I met Bill Bratton, who was then heading the force and
later became commissioner in New York. I ended up at the New Haven
police, and I served on Bill Bratton's transition team for the
NYPD. Then I was head of the Metro North Police, the agency that
polices the trains that run throughout New York and into
Connecticut.

In
1997, I was cutting the ribbon in Connecticut at one of our
railroad stations in Stamford. I met the new mayor, Danell Malloy,
and we hit it off. We discovered we had been assistant district
attorneys in Brooklyn together and had never met.

He's
a great guy, who I respect and like enormously. In 1995, he
campaigned on community policing. He had inherited another police
chief and wanted to bring in someone he knew. He recruited me to
come up, and I've been in Stamford three years now.

The City of Stamford

Let
me tell you a little bit about the place where I'm the Chief of
Police. In Connecticut, the state with the highest per capita
income in America, there are five cities with more than 100,000
residents. Those five cities are the capital, Hartford, New Haven,
Bridgeport, Waterbury and, of course, Stamford. Four of the five
cities are among the poorest in the nation. They have the highest
infant mortality rates and the highest out-of-wedlock birth rates
in America. They are losing population all the time. And that
doesn't even bring Connecticut down to second richest state in
America. And then there's Stamford. Stamford is booming.

Stamford is booming because of the
geography. It's the southern city in Fairfield County, one of the
richest counties in America, right above New York City. It's a city
of about 120,000. About 25,000 to 30,000 people commute every day
to New York City, more often than not by rail. And somewhere
between 25,000 and 50,000 people commute to Stamford for work. It's
what Washington Post writer Joe Garreau calls an edge city. An
enormous number of corporations have come into the city. One
corporation after another came to downtown Stamford where, up until
the early 1990s, they could avoid paying income taxes and still be
very close to New York City. They built giant campus-like
facilities all over town and brought thousands of jobs and millions
of dollars in tax base. We have more people coming in than going
out each day. It's not a suburb any more. The train platforms are
full in both directions.

The
city of Stamford is nearly 39 square miles, very large geography
for the northeast. It's a diverse city that looks a lot like the
United States as a whole. There are rich people and poor people.
We've just torn down the worst of our public housing but there's
still an inner city. There's always been a significant black
population and Latinos are just now arriving in large numbers.

A Crisis of Leadership

I've
learned a lot along the way, and believe me when I say there were a
lot of mistakes. What I've learned about police leadership and
organization is this: we talk a lot about decentralization, and a
lot of it is just talk. People say that we need to give more power
to everybody, that we need to flatten the organizations, and we do
need to do those things. But to do it, we need to find leaders.
Officers look for leadership, and the chief can't do it alone.

I
came to Stamford in February of 1998. On my first day of work, I
walked in at 5:00 in the morning and found the door to police
headquarters locked. I waited for someone to let me in. The
department wasn't open to the public or to its own people, and it
didn't take long before I realized that the crisis that was taking
place was coming from within.

Stamford had a dispirited police
department. It was a department with wonderful people who had been
devastated, who had lost much of the reason they had wanted to be
there. The department had broken their spirits by never changing,
never offering new opportunities, so they had found other
outlets.

No
one was allowed to make a decision. I remember my first homicide. I
rolled out of bed to go to it, and they were asking me, "Should we
call a detective? Do we have permission to call the detective on
overtime?" I said, "Well, I'll let you make that decision." So the
chief of detectives never showed up; but he was there at 8:00 a.m.
at his office, and by 9:00, he had typed a report about what had
happened even though I was the one who was there and he was
not.

The
city had grown and changed, but the department was the same as it
had always been. All policing was delivered through police
headquarters. The chief was pleased with it; the officers didn't
mind it; and the department was proud of the fact that nothing had
changed in three decades. Not a single patrol sector had
changed.

The
officers didn't want anything different. They didn't want better
shifts. The union paid for erecting the billboards during the
contract negotiations that said, "Welcome to Dodge City" so that
the half-million people who drive up and down Route 95 every day
could see that sign. At the same time, Stamford was a city that was
blossoming and taking off. The downtown was coming to life for the
first time in many years.

Selecting Deputies

When
I came in, there were two deputy chief's jobs that were empty. In
one of the first conversations I had with Bill Bratton after taking
office, I remember saying to him, "I'm traveling alone." Bill
always traveled alone, too, until he came to New York for the
second time.

I
said in the contract negotiations, "Look, I want to fight for the
right to pick any deputy chiefs I want, from anywhere I want. So
let me do that." The union let me win that one, and when I was
ready to pick the deputy chiefs, I said, "I don't need to do any
interviews, because that's what I've been doing for six
months."

I
chose insiders: Three out of four were lieutenants because it was
clear to me that in the Stamford police department, the lieutenants
were the leaders. There are four deputy chiefs, six captains, 12
lieutenants, 52 sergeants. The organization rests on the
lieutenants.

Everyone appreciated the fact that I had
fought for and won the right to bring in outsiders, and everyone
thought I would. But I picked them from the inside. Picking new
deputy chiefs wasn't the whole deal. The administration as a whole
was closed. The higher up you were in the organization, the less
you had to work: That was the culture.

"I Want It To Be Your Jealous
Mistress"

I
ended up calling up all of the lieutenants and telling them that
I'd pay for overtime because I wanted to know what they thought. I
wanted a staff meeting. They hadn't had a staff meeting in years.
Nobody could remember when the last one had been.

I
said, "Show me the conference room." They did. It was a storage
room. We threw the filing cabinets out of the second story window
into the parking lot. Once we cleared it out and had a conference
room to use again, I said to them:

I'm
here. I plan on staying. And what I want is for you to come back
again. You tell me what it will take to get your heart back in this
department, and you tell me what it's going to take to get your
best days, because I want your best days. I want you up all night
thinking about this joint. I want you back in the morning before
you need to be because you can't wait to get to work. I want you
thinking about your job. I want you dreaming about it. I want it to
hurt your marriage. I want it to be your jealous mistress. I want
it to be your obsession.

They
thought I was out of my mind. Maybe I was. I said, "We are going to
meet every day, and we're going to be back here every morning."

They
realized they were getting some serious overtime. I told them that
I didn't give a damn about the money, so we started talking and
being honest. I purposely didn't bring in any consulting firms,
although I later did call in some consultants on technical issues.
We ate doughnuts, drank coffee, and just hung around and talked. I
let everyone tell his or her story, and there wasn't a single man
or woman that didn't tell a story about being hurt, about being in
a department that had betrayed their hopes. There was the feeling
that nobody cared and that what they said meant nothing.

We
reworked the police department. I had to find the leaders in the
police department, and they were, as I've said, the lieutenants.
Chiefs come and go. When I was looking for the leaders, I realized
that I could walk down the hall and speak to roll call, but the
guys down at roll call are keeping their eyes on the sergeant and
lieutenant. The lieutenant just rolls his eyes when I say something
he doesn't agree with and stares out the window, and so does
everyone else.

Mistakes in New Haven

I
did this because I realized what my first big mistake in New Haven
had been. I realized that you have to find the leaders first.

I
came to New Haven as a police academy rookie: 32 years old, the
oldest and highest ranking rookie Connecticut had ever had in the
academy. I was a lawyer and a prosecutor, but they made me go to
the academy before I could take over running a department. I
thanked the academy when I was done and said, "Thanks. I'm not
going to transfer you." They made me pay my dues, and I left.

I
was chief of operations in New Haven. I ran the entire department.
I never took a day off. As the young chief, I said, "I'm going out
to ride with the cops." And I thought I was doing everything right,
because I had read about Pat Murphy and how he would get out there
and work with the cops.

Boy,
did I get it wrong. The supervisors led this department, not me. I
decided not to make that mistake in Stamford. I worked for the
bosses, and I spent my time with the lieutenants and the
sergeants.

Rethinking the Squad System

The
lieutenants ran the Stamford Police Department because they ran the
squads. A squad is a little fraternity, a group of 30 to 50 cops.
Officers worked a week of days, then had a few days off. Then they
came back to work a week of nights, then had a few days off, and
then went back to a week of days. Midnight shift was separate. They
had a few sergeants and a lieutenant.

The
squads were on duty together. Then they went home at night at the
same time and went drinking together and came in the next day. A
group of them went out like a tide and patrolled for eight hours.
Then they came back and went off, and then another group came up
eight hours. They never had anything to do with each other.

It
was three cities that never talked. Citizens didn't know what was
going on. They would ask cops about something, and they couldn't
even
figure out who worked in their neighborhood.

I
decided that these lieutenants were people I was going to break
bread with, and we spent a lot of time talking. Then I said, "Look,
you run this police department. If you decide you don't like
someone up there in your squad, then that person gets a lousy
shift. You get to dole out overtime. You're the ones who have the
power."

Letting the Lieutenants Take Charge

What
they wanted was to be in charge, to have real control over the way
the department was run and the way the policies worked. So we
figured out how to carve up this department and put them in charge,
where they have real jurisdiction. We redesigned it around 12
commands: one for each of the lieutenants. We split the city into
five commands for patrol, five geographic commands where the
lieutenants were responsible 24 hours a day. Why? Because that's
how they wanted to do it.

I
spent a lot of time with them. I did not make the mistake again of
undercutting my sergeants and lieutenants, because they were our
leaders. I spent all my time out on patrol with the sergeants and
the lieutenants and showed them a lot of respect. Over time, I did
ask them, "Can I go out with one of the officers, please?" But
always through them. They never felt undercut.

I
had no plan to do that when I came in, but it's what felt right.
You have to redesign the roles of the real leaders if you want to
be a good leader yourself.

I
remember discussions at the Police Executive Research Forum one
meeting, the discussion question was: "Is it more important to be
an external chief or an internal chief?"

I
argued for being an external chief, and now I think converts make
the best preachers. I was all external in the old days, but I
realized that first you have to be an internal chief, and then,
over time, you've got to be both. The Stamford police had a crisis
within, and to fix it, I needed help from the people who really ran
the department: the lieutenants. Those lieutenants created the
police department.

We
looked at a new level of internal detail. I told them, "Go out and
do it. You do it and I'll support it. Go out and find a substation.
Go out and organize your people. Do it all. I will do none of it
for you, but I'll support you." We now have five districts and nine
substations. We got all of the substations for free.

It
got to the point where I said, "You're in command, whether you
command the detective squad, the youth programs, or whether you are
the narcotics lieutenant or the internal affairs lieutenant, or
whether you are one of the five patrol district lieutenants.
Wherever you are a lieutenant in command, you get the same deal.
You are a lieutenant commander."

I
gave them new arrangements for work. I told them a few things.

Number one, we're giving you a take-home
car. You never had one before. The same for other equipment: cell
phone, laptop, you name it.

Number two, I'm giving you flex time. Come
and go when you want.

Number three, if you need overtime, spend
it on yourself. I'm giving you all 12 hours overtime to spend on
yourself because it's not a 40-hour job. Use it or lose it. You
want to work an 80-hour week, go work it. I'll pay for you. The
only thing I ask is that you take home your problems. You think
about this job 24 hours a day. If there's anything going on this
community, God help you if I find out about it before you do.

That's what happened. They tested me. They
pulled everything they could pull. They did everything they wanted.
They played with me, tried to push my limits, and I let them.

A
lot of them doubled their salaries. I could not have cared less,
because they tripled their workload, and they tripled their
commitment. They cared about the department again. Sick time went
down. They didn't want to use their vacation. They competed with
one another. All of a sudden, they were giving cops a hard time
about little things that they hadn't cared about before. They were
saying things like, "Why didn't you show up for work today? What's
this about you have an injury on duty? I can't afford for you to be
off today."

And
crime went down. It went down a lot. Our crime reduction was one of
the biggest on the East Coast, and we're now tied for the safest
city on the eastern seaboard. In 1999, we had the largest crime
reduction in any city east of the Mississippi.

All
of a sudden, the lieutenants were being the pain-in-the butt chiefs
that everyone used to hate. They were writing reports. They were
making presentations. They were doing things they had never done in
their lives. They had no role models to follow. They had no
mentors. They had no examples.

We
were all flying by the seat of our pants. We were having the time
of our life. We were making mistakes. It didn't matter. The cops
had never seen such energized bosses in their lives, and it
infected them. You give a boss a real responsibility and authority,
and he or she will rarely disappoint you.

Turning Lieutenants into Chiefs

For
the first time in their careers, the lieutenants were feeling
concerns for the community because they were not isolated in the
world of police headquarters. All of a sudden, it's not the police
chief who's out there feeling everyone's pain and who is at every
church group and every community meeting and every school and every
neighborhood association and every merchant's group. And the chief
isn't always the one hearing from the community: "Chief, I want to
see more cops. Chief, what about the kids on the corner? Chief, the
cops are disrespectful."

Now
they are there at those meetings: the lieutenants and the sergeants
and the patrol officers. When you stop insulating them, soon
they're feeling what you're feeling; they start acting like you
would act. It's remarkable.

I
wish I had learned that 10 years ago. When I was in New Haven, I
was the community police officer. I was the lieutenant. I was doing
their job. Once you get them to do their job, there's a remarkable
transformation. They're fighting the cops in the locker room about
"Get out of your car!" They say, "I don't want to hear one more
time how you drove by this place. Who do you think you're fooling?
You do it again and you're out of here."

Every crazy idea got tried, and a lot of
them worked. Bill Bratton taught me something which I never forgot.
He said: "Go out there, as chief, and try to find somebody doing
something right instead of wrong. Go catch him doing something
right." I spent every day running around trying to catch people
doing something right. I was throwing compliments out to everybody.
It works!

Summer Camp Compliments of the Drug
Dealers

We
emptied police headquarters and took people out from behind desks.
We have officers in every school. We started new things. We're
running basketball leagues. And we paid for everything. You walk
into a park, and every kid has new sneakers and is bouncing a
basketball, and we bought every one of them.

We
started a crazy summer camp because officers in the schools said,
"You know, these kids, in the summer, they don't know what to do."
We got the school to open up the building and build a summer camp.
We put a plaque up thanking the drug dealers of Stamford for the
asset forfeiture money we used for the camp. I notified the Justice
Department, and I notified the state. I said, "I am notifying you
ahead of time now that I might be breaking the law. I'm using the
drug forfeiture money for this summer camp. I dare you to tell me
to stop. I've now put you on notice." The drug forfeiture money is
not being used buy police equipment, but God knows I need it. We
hired high school students and trained them; paid them well
too.

We
started Compstat, the accountability system used in New York. We
went to two staff meetings a week, every Tuesday and Friday. I'm
very well aware that people are performing for me, that it's
theater, but I like timely and accurate intelligence. It's a tough
ticket. It's as good a show as anything on Broadway. But the bottom
line is, I understand that, but I'm going to be after you if you
ever forget that what you're doing is about results.

If
you wake up at 2:00 in the morning, you better wake up screaming
about crime, fear, and disorder. If you can't scream those things
in your sleep, then you don't know what your job is. I don't care
how hard you work. You produce results. You bring down crime; you
bring down fear; you bring down disorder. Never lose your
focus.

Police Chiefs' Dirty Secret

I
love what I do. It's my work and my family, but there's one thing
that's always bothered me. Most officers never get promoted in
their career, and a little secret most people don't know is that
most officers never choose to take a promotional exam. I see really
talented guys who could move up easily and even say they want to,
and then they never show up on Saturday to take the sergeants exam
even though they're registered.

You
get excuses: "Well, it was snowing. Well, something came up. Oh my
car wouldn't start." There's always a reason not to take the exam.
The average cop never takes one in their career. It's because there
are so many problems with police leadership. It's not that they
hate their bosses all the time. It's that the leadership has
problems. The cops don't trust it.

I
look back now, on my third anniversary at Stamford, 22 years after
I went into Commissioner Murphy's office, all these years after I
left the prosecutor's office, and what do I see about my
colleagues? Whether its my 220 or so colleagues in cities with more
than 100,000 residents, or the police chiefs I work with in
Fairfield County, or the police chiefs in Connecticut, or just the
police chiefs I know in person, the one thing that pains me is that
there's a little secret about a lot of police chiefs that is hard
to believe: Most police chiefs don't like cops. They hate cops.

And
most cops know that. Most lieutenants know that. Most sergeants and
captains and commanders know that. Somehow, you spend your life
climbing and grappling and fighting your way to the top; yet when
you get to the top, you spend your energy holding that job by both
hands, and you feel the greatest threat to your job security is the
cops. They're going to mess up at night; they are going to screw
up; they are going to take you down.

You
walk into most police departments, and the abyss between the
chief's office and the rank and file is gigantic, and its hard for
me to see. Maybe 20 years later, if I'm still around, I'll be one
of those guys and say, "What happened?"

It's
amazing: the union on one side of the table and the chiefs on the
other, and they fight a lot. Are we ever going to trust each other?
The rank and file don't show up for those exams I mentioned because
they don't trust us.

Chiefs tend to promote loyalists. They
spend their time looking out for you, and they end up controlling
everyone around you. The atmosphere quickly becomes stifling. It
quickly becomes one where you don't trust the people who work for
you. The chiefs feel that the cops are going to mess up, that
they're going to make poor decisions. They are not well-trained;
they're not well regulated. At these police chiefs' meetings, the
chiefs sit around telling war stories about how they were screwed
by their cops and how life would be great at police departments if
it wasn't for the cops that worked there.

You
have to trust the people that work for you. If you give them trust,
more often than not they won't break it. If you give them
responsibility and authority, more often than not they will rise to
the occasion. A chief can't do it alone.

If
you bring a lot of rules and regulation, it becomes a problem.
There's always one more study and one more regulation and one more
thing to monitor it. The truth is, if you have the right people,
the rules are irrelevant. It's not about the rules. I think it's
about local control; it's about decentralizing; it's about coming
in and being flexible. It's about investing in your people, and
it's about looking for results.

Dean Esserman, the chief of
police in Stamford, Connecticut, started his career as an assistant
district attorney in Brooklyn, New York.